CartThrob vs Expresso Store

Alright guys... it's comparison time. Just how does CartThrob stack up? Take a look at the competition and judge for yourself.

If CartThrob can't do it out of the box, it can be extended to meet your exacting requirements. So, why bother with other tools that just go halfway and stop? Learn once and use repeatedly. That's a recipe for success.

It's our intent to fairly represent the products below, though we're obviously partial. Please contact us if you find any discrepancies in this list and we will correct immediately. CartThrob is a great product and it stands on its own so there's no reason for us to make anything up.

Export orders, view invoices, add payments, authorize transactions and make updates within order manager. No front-end editing in EE templates or custom administrative capabilities are possible.

Limited

Includes order management utility, where you can add payments, change status, notes, and view order details. No ability to use EE channel data or manage within EE templates.

Custom order fields

Yes

Limited to six

No

Guests can view invoices

Yes

Yes

No

Control Panel Access

Yes

Settings & Reports are controlled by completely different modules.

Yes

No

Custom Administration

Can create & save products in templates

Yes

Yes

No

Can modify orders in templates and create custom interfaces for orders

Yes

No

No

Admins can checkout as a member

Yes

No

No

Admins can checkout as a guest, and register the guest during checkout

Yes

No

No

Reporting

Point and click creation & saving of custom reports

Yes

No

Yes

Template based reports

Yes

Yes

No

Order report

Yes

Yes

Yes

Order exporting

Yes

Yes

Yes

Daily sales report

Yes

Yes

Yes

Customer report

Yes

Yes

Yes

Product Report

Yes

Yes

Yes

CSV export

Yes

Yes

Yes

PDF report export

No

Yes

No

Customizable report export

Yes

No

No

Members

Guest checkout

Yes

Yes

Yes

Create member during checkout

Yes

Limited

Yes

Saves member data

Yes

Saves to EE's member system as well as to channel entries when used with Profile:Edit

Limited

to EE's member system

Limited

Uses its own member data storage system

Dedicated add-on repository

Yes

No

No

Flexible customer flow

Yes

Yes

Limited

Includes templates for cart, checkout and thank-you pages

Member Permissions / Access Control Levels (ACL)

Permissions management is like member groups on steroids. You can attach permissions to each product sold, and choose to show and hide content to your members based only on their purchased permissions, not on their membership. Member groups are great for content administration, but lousy for access control. That's where permissions management comes in.

Each status can have own template. Different emails can be sent based on starting status (eg. backordered to shipped, versus processing to shipped)

Limited

Each status can have own template

No

Uses one template

API for third party notification support

Yes

No

No

Security

SSL support

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cart data stored in database

Yes

Yes

Yes

Cart data encrypted

Yes

No

No

Session fingerprinting available This allows you to have greater control over who accesses the cart. If your data is extremely sensitive, this can help keep phishing attacks and cart hijacking at bay.

Yes

No

No

Shipping

Overview

One of Expresso Store's selling points is it's powerful rate matrix, which allows you to create multiple rules for Shipping. CartThrob has an analogous system with even more power called Multi-Location Manager (available at no extra cost) which allows you to set shipping methods, currencies, taxes, pricing schemes and control other configurations based on country, state, zip, region, or custom data that's been added to the cart. Multi-Location Manager is also integrated with EE's ip2nation module, so it will attempt to guess customer locations upon entry.

Location based configurator

Yes

Yes

No

Plugin based shipping methods this allows for expansion and modification of shipping calculations

Yes

No

No

Per Item Rates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Per Location Rates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Per Location Price Threshold Rates

Yes

No

Yes

Per Location Quantity Threshold Rates

Yes

No

No

Per Location Weight Threshold Rates

Yes

No

Yes

By Weight

Yes

Yes

Yes

Flat Rates

Yes

Yes

Yes

Shipping Cost Override Per Item

Limited

Calculations depend on shipping plugin used

No

No

Non-shippable status per item

Yes

Yes

No

Live Rates

Australia Post

No

Yes

Yes

Canada Post

Yes

No

No

FedEx

Yes

No

Yes

UPS

Yes

Yes

Yes

USPS

Yes

No

Yes

Taxes

Display item prices with taxes included

Yes

Yes

No

Set items to tax-exempt status

Yes

Yes

No

Plugin based tax methods this allows for expansion and modification of tax calculations

Yes

No

No

Add tax classes to items

Limited

requires custom tax plugin

No

No

Tax methodology can be changed based on location

Limited

requires Multi-location add-on, or custom tax plugin

No

No

Tax & Shipping Regions

Countries listed in dropdowns can be adjusted point & click. Also, countries, and supported regions can be edited in the locales config file.

Control panel support for country and region editing

Static

Discounts, Sales & Vouchers/Coupons

Promo Codes / Vouchers

Yes

Yes

Yes

Per item sale pricing

Yes

Yes

Yes

Restrict discounts by member group

Yes

Yes

No

Restrict via date

Yes

Yes

Yes

Restrict via use limit

Yes

Yes

Yes

Restrict via per-member user limit

Yes

No

No

Restrict to specific products

Yes

No

Yes

Restrict to categories

Yes

No

Yes

Plugin based logic

Yes

No

No

Fixed Discounts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Percentage Discounts

Yes

Yes

Yes

Shipping Discounts

Yes

No

No

Buy one Get One

Yes

No

No

Payments

Overview

Our wildly robust and flexible payment library makes it possible to support direct, direct post and offsite payment methods of all kinds with tight integration and full feature support. If we don't currently support a gateway, our seasoned team can build just about any gateway with a little bit of documentation.

SKU and stock level changes based on customer selections. Region dropdown is updated when country is selected.

Yes

Shipping options change dynamically based on user selection.

Hardcore Development

Cart Object Easily Accessible to Third Party Addons. CartThrob is seriously expandable

Yes

Cart Object & Methods are available everywhere in modules, extensions, and plugins just by instantiating EE. The cartthrob loader method makes all cartthrob libraries and files accessible to your application.